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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24156421">One Last Thing</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and/pseuds/Celia_and'>Celia_and</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Anaphylaxis, Angst, Bees, CPR, Co-workers, Cowgirl Position, Despite the summary no one actually dies, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Fear of Death, Feelings Realization, First Aid, Happily Ever After, Happy Ending, Hospitalization, Hospitals, I can't stress this enough:, Masturbation, Medical Conditions, Medical Procedures, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Nightmares, Pining, Pining Ben Solo, Reading Aloud, Reference to Weight Loss, Severe Allergy, Sexual Fantasy, Smut, Soft Ben Solo, Unconsciousness, Vaginal Sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:09:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,367</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24156421</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celia_and/pseuds/Celia_and</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>When she talks to him and smiles at him and laughs at his hesitant jokes, he forgets that he’s just himself. He makes believe for a little while that he could be someone to her. Her nearness conjures candlelight and a white tablecloth and her in a dress with her hair down and one dessert with two forks.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s pointless to dream, he knows. He’ll leave that to a different Ben, in another life.</em>
</p><p>----------</p><p>What if, in the seconds before you die, you were allowed to know everyone who was secretly in love with you?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>449</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1850</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Ijustfellintothissendhelp, Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Two Inches</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyreyalltheway/gifts">reyreyalltheway</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Based on this fantastically angsty <a href="https://twitter.com/LizHackett/status/1256345240862027776">tweet</a>:<br/>“In the seconds before you die, you should be allowed to know everyone who was secretly in love with you at some point.”</p><p>A gift for the precious <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyreyalltheway">reyreyalltheway</a>, who loves my angst and I love her for it! 🤗</p><p>These gorgeous moodboards were made by the extravagantly talented <a href="https://twitter.com/reylographer">@reylographer</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Rey_Organa_Solo">@Rey_Organa_Solo</a>!</p><p>Please mind the tags if you have any medical/hospital-related triggers. 💛</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He feels her wrist for a pulse and doesn’t find it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She’s already dead.</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’s no surprise to Ben that he doesn’t fit in with the rest of the team. Most of them are only a year or two out of college. Ben is closer in age to Poe, their boss, but that doesn’t mean he gets along with him any better. It’s not that he <em>doesn’t</em> get along with them. It’s just that he wants to come to the office, do work, and go home, and that doesn’t seem to meet the team’s expectations.</p><p>There are potlucks and birthday parties and happy hours, and barely a week seems to pass without a new mandatory-without-being-mandatory social event on the team calendar. And the fact that Ben hails these get-togethers with anything less than the unmitigated rapture of the others puts him on the outside of the group. Which he doesn’t mind. He grits his teeth and suffers through the events he can’t get out of, and he devises excuses to duck the rest. He’s invented an imaginary dog, two cats (one with a skin condition requiring medication at very specific intervals), a sick aunt, and a needy elderly neighbor. The only thing he hasn’t concocted by way of excuse is a significant other, because they would never buy that.</p><p>He gets a reputation: the weird, quiet one. Maybe a little bit creepy. Awkward, definitely. They throw him scraps of camaraderie, just enough to preserve the illusion they’ve concocted of the team as some sort of close-knit fraternity. They start organizing charity projects. Ben wouldn’t be in the least surprised if someone proposed renting a huge house that they could all live in and host weekly keggers.</p><p>And okay, he could definitely make more of an effort than he does. He doesn’t muster enough false enthusiasm or affect any degree of extraversion that could make them feel like he’s not suffering through the trial of their company. Once in a while he resolves to put on more of an act, to hide his disdain. But it all just feels like so much work, and what’s the point, really?</p><p>So when the newest employee joins the team, that’s how they probably describe him to her. <em>We have an amazing team! I mean, except Ben.</em> He doesn’t care. He shouldn’t care. Except then he meets her, and when she smiles at him her eyes light up and he has to remind his lungs how to breathe.</p><p>And then, when it’s too late, he wishes he had made the effort to be someone that people could like. He still doesn’t care about people in general, of course. But when it comes to Rey, he cares.</p><p><em>God,</em> does he care.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He happens to see a plastic tube fall out of her purse one day, and he picks it up and jogs a few steps to catch up with her.</p><p>“Rey? You dropped this.”</p><p>“Oh!” she turns around and gives him a smile that should be reserved for things like thanking someone for rescuing her dog from a burning building, not just picking something up from the floor. “Thanks, Ben!”</p><p>“No problem.” He extends it to her, making sure to hold one end so she doesn’t have to touch his hand to take it from him.</p><p>“My EpiPen,” she remarks, taking it. “For bee stings.” She rolls her eyes in a playfully commiserating aren’t-bees-the-worst kind of way, and up until then Ben hadn’t thought much about bees except to appreciate their contribution to agriculture, but now he hates them with a violent passion.</p><p>Afterward, he wonders if the rest of the team knows, or if this is something of hers that she shared only with him. The notion sends a frisson of pleasure down his spine: the thrill of knowing things about her. Private things.</p><p>That week he happens to notice a flyer on the bulletin board at the gym for a First Aid and CPR class at the local hospital. He goes online that evening and registers. It’s a responsible thing to do, getting First Aid and CPR certified. He’s just being a good citizen.</p><p>The class takes most of the day on a Saturday. It’s in a kind of multipurpose meeting room in the hospital annex. Chairs are arrayed in rows on one half of the room to make room for CPR dummies laid out on the floor on the other. Ben chooses a seat in the front row. The instructor teaches them the principle before they’re allowed to lay a hand on the dummies. The chest should be compressed two inches, which takes Ben aback. There isn’t two inches worth of give in a person’s chest without doing some damage, is there? The instructor answers before he can ask.</p><p>“Don’t worry about cracking cartilage or breaking ribs. The potential benefit far outweighs the risk of injury. Because if they’re not breathing and their heart has stopped, they’re already dead.”</p><p>The chest of Ben’s dummy obligingly compresses two inches. He carefully tips the chin back just enough, eyeing the chest to see it rise with his rescue breaths. His compressions could serve as a metronome with the perfect 100 beats per minute. The instructor praises his form and moves on to other students. He keeps going, just to practice. When the instructor calls a halt a few minutes later Ben is out of breath. He makes a mental note to add more cardio to his routine at the gym.</p><p>When they break for lunch, the rest of the class goes to the hospital cafeteria, but Ben gets a bag of chips from the vending machine down the hall and comes back to the classroom to pick the instructor’s brain on the finer points of administering CPR to people with smaller frames. She appreciates his curiosity and gives him a preview of the afternoon’s content. He appreciates that she doesn’t ask the reason for his particular interest in EpiPen application.</p><p>He leaves the hospital late in the afternoon with the pride of having thoroughly earned the new Red Cross card tucked securely in his wallet. Just doing his civic duty.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’s hard for him to wrap his brain around how beautiful she is. And no one else seems to notice. He has to bite his tongue in staff meetings so the words don’t burst out. <em>Am I insane? Is it just me? How are we all just casually having a staff meeting without acknowledging that the most beautiful woman to ever live is sitting right there?</em></p><p>He starts going to happy hours more often. She’s always there, naturally, and when he arrives before her and she catches sight of him, she smiles with her eyes and comes over to talk to him. Nothing profound, just small talk. But she seeks him out like he’s worth talking to. It occurs to him for the first time that it might be true, if <em>she</em> thinks so.</p><p>She’s great at her job. She’s a passionate advocate for the clients in her portfolio, so when something doesn’t go their way, she sets her jaw and redoubles her efforts. Sometimes she gets truly frustrated or angry and lets it show. He likes her even better then, if that’s possible. Her passion electrifies him. He looks down and sees goosebumps on his arms. Her eyes fill with the fire of an avenging angel, or demon. He wants her to devour him.</p><p>He wants other things too. Things that he tries not to let himself imagine, but they come too vividly when his waking defenses fall. In dreams she steals in on him half-dressed, with tousled hair and a smile of molten heat. She clasps her hands behind his neck and she tips her head back and lets him run longing hands down her arms and her sides. He traces the outline of her ribs and worships breasts that his touch yearns to memorize. He cups the swell of her ass and kneads her against him. He ruts into her stomach and she closes lazy eyes and holds on to him and takes it, lets his grasping hands consume her body and his feverish cock scorch her skin.</p><p>But she always turns away when his mouth seeks hers.</p><p>Even in his dreams, he doesn’t get to kiss her.</p><p>He wakes rock-hard and trembling, and he buries his face in his pillow as he curls his body in on itself and furiously finishes himself off. He leaves sweat on the sheets, and sometimes tears, too.</p><p><em>Weird. Quiet. Awkward. Creepy.</em> In the darkness of those aching nights, he thinks that they’re probably right about him, after all.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Ben hopes his misread the event on the team calendar, but no, there it is: “Team Picnic!!” He clicks through with trepidation, hoping that the term “picnic” is being used exceptionally loosely, for an event that’s actually indoors, where there aren’t bees. But the location is “Schubert Farm – We’ll carpool!”</p><p>He wrestles with himself all morning and finally resolves to talk to Poe after lunch. He knocks on his wide-open door unannounced, and Poe genially waves him in. Ben shuts the door behind him. Poe looks concerned.</p><p>“So, about this team picnic?” Ben starts haltingly.</p><p>“You’re not getting out of this one, Ben,” Poe says. “Get a cat sitter if you need to, but I want the whole team there!”</p><p>“No, it’s not that. I can go. I just wondered if it’s the smartest thing, to have a team event outside.”</p><p>“I can provide sunscreen, if that’s a concern?” Poe responds, puzzled.</p><p>“No, I mean, with Rey. And her bee allergy.”</p><p>Poe waves him off. “Oh, it’ll be fine.”</p><p>“What do you mean, it’ll be fine?” Ben tries to keep the anger from his voice. “She could have a serious allergic reaction.”</p><p>“She and Rose are the ones who planned the picnic. I’m sure she wouldn’t have organized something that she wasn’t up to.”</p><p>Ben searches for a counterargument and doesn’t find one. “I just...don’t think it’s a good idea.”</p><p>“Okay thanks, Ben, your concern has been noted. Now, if there’s nothing else...”</p><p>Ben wants to slam the door on his way out. He doesn’t, but he leaves it half shut, so Poe will have to get up to return it to its fully-open position.</p><p>Back at his desk, Ben struggles to tamp down the fear that intrudes despite himself. <em>She goes outside every day of her life. She’ll be fine. She has medication. It’s not your place to tell her what she should and shouldn’t do. She’s a grown woman. You’re not allowed to want to take care of her. You’re not allowed to want anything about her.</em></p><p>It would be easier if she weren’t so kind. It feels like she goes out of her way to be nice to him—<em>him—</em>and no one has ever done that before, so years of attachment built up without ever having an object. Now that there’s <em>her,</em> he’s latched on. He should come with a warning label.</p><p>But when she talks to him and smiles at him and laughs at his hesitant jokes, he forgets that he’s just himself. He makes believe for a little while that he could be someone to her. Her nearness conjures candlelight and a white tablecloth and her in a dress with her hair down and one dessert with two forks.</p><p>It’s pointless to dream, he knows. He’ll leave that to a different Ben, in another life.</p><p>So he puts the picnic on his calendar without complaint. He even volunteers to sit in the back seat of Poe’s car when they’re figuring out carpool arrangements, despite the fact that he’s about eight inches too tall to fit with any degree of comfort. Rey organized this, and if it will make her happy for him to fold up into an accordion of joints for an hour-long car ride, then that’s what he’ll do.</p><p>It’s a warm cloudless day, perfect for a picnic, and Rey is happy as they unload the cars. Ben volunteers to carry the big unwieldy cooler, and her smile as she thanks him rivals the sun. He gets a spot at the very corner of the big square of blankets, close enough to the edge of the group to be mistaken for part of it. The sandwiches and chips and soda cans are handed out and there’s nothing more to do for the moment but eat. And watch Rey, in his case.</p><p>He watches her kick her sandals off and talk animatedly to Rose without regard for the half-chewed food in her mouth. He watches her get up, barefoot, to fetch another soda from the cooler for Poe and throw it in an unerring arc. He sees the very second when the laugh freezes on her face and she gingerly lifts her foot. He sees the sharp pain on her face and he sees her scramble for her purse, and he knows.</p><p>He’s by her side in an instant. No one else has noticed yet. “What can I do?”</p><p>She’s frantically rummaging. “Where is it?”</p><p>He snatches the bag from her hands and dumps it out on the grass, shaking contents from all pockets. She’s down on her hands and knees, frantically sifting through to find it. To find the tube of plastic that will save her life. He joins her, and he sweeps with his eyes and his hands, but it’s not there. It’s not there, and she’s holding onto the sleeve of his shirt with one hand as she claws at her throat with the other. Her face turns purple, and he catches her as she falls.</p><p>Now someone has noticed, because he hears someone yell her name behind him. Poe rushes over, and Ben says, “Her EpiPen. Check her car.” He tosses Poe the keys, and when someone else comes up to try to help he barks, “Call 911.”</p><p>He’s cradling her torso in his lap as tears leak into her hairline and her airway closes, and her hands grasp for him and a deathly desperate pleading fills her eyes. There’s a hysterical screaming that starts behind him: not just one scream but over and over, an echo of the agony of having her in his arms and suffering. And dying. Because she is dying, now.</p><p>The expression of mortal terror leaves her face, to be replaced by an even more terrifying slack blankness. He feels her wrist for a pulse and doesn’t find it.</p><p>He tries to block out the screams and think back to what the CPR instructor said.</p><p>
  <em>Don’t worry about cracking cartilage or breaking ribs. The potential benefit far outweighs the risk of injury. Because if they’re not breathing and their heart has stopped, they’re already dead.</em>
</p><p>She’s already dead.</p><p>He carefully lays her down on the grass, kneels beside her, takes a deep breath, and begins.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I honestly don’t know yet if this is going to be two chapters or three, but I do know that I love this sweet Ben of mine so stinking much.</p><p>Halle, for beta-ing this and for being all-around unbelievably wonderful to me, thank you forever. ❤️</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Three Minutes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Moodboards by <a href="https://twitter.com/reylographer">@reylographer</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/Rey_Organa_Solo">@Rey_Organa_Solo</a> 💛</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>The rescue breaths do nothing. He tilts her head back by the jaw and watches her chest, praying that it will rise. But he can tell without seeing that it won’t. Her mouth rejects the breaths that he tries to give her, her airway swollen shut. For a second he wonders if he’s doing it wrong. Did he tilt her head back too much, or not enough? Did he already mess up, on the very first step?</p><p>His ears fill with a rushing that makes everything else sound very far away. Someone is still screaming, maybe, but it’s a distant echo. He hears his heartbeat. As he positions his shoulders above her sternum and readies himself to start compressions, he braces with all his might for what it will do to him, if he hurts her. He might hurt her, he might <em>break</em> her, but he’ll have to keep going anyway.</p><p>The first compressions are too gentle, he knows. He barely presses down onto her. He feels no give. He pictures her heart, waiting inside its cage of ribs. He imagines the oxygenated blood that pools there, and the rest of her body that cries out for it. Her organs and her limbs and her incomparably precious brain. And he puts his weight into it.</p><p>He <em>feels </em>the crunch more than he hears it.</p><p>He counts aloud with the compressions, like the instructor told him. To thirty, like a metronome, before he returns to her mouth in the hope that her windpipe is letting a sliver of air through. And then back to her chest. Mouth. Chest. (The screaming in the background is crying, now.) Mouth. Chest. Mouth. Chest. (Someone touches his shoulder, tries to say something. He pushes them away.) Mouth. Chest. Mouth. Chest. <em>(Stay alive.)</em> Mouth. Chest. (Sweat drips into his eyes. He hardly notices it until it blurs his vision. It’s okay. He doesn’t need to see, as long as the heel of his hand can find her breastbone and his fingers can find her jaw.) Mouth. Chest. Mouth. Chest. (How long has it been? Is the ambulance coming? His arms shake between sets. But then he locks his elbows and forgets his body. He stops counting out loud, so he can breathe.) Mouth. Chest. Mouth. Chest. Mouth.</p><p>“Ben,” a voice comes, insistent. “I’m CPR certified too. Let me take a turn, so you can take a break. The ambulance is coming.”</p><p>He shakes his head. He doesn’t know who it is, and they sound capable, and his back screams and his shoulders stab and his lungs cry out for air, but it’s not even a question. No. Never. There’s no one who would take better care of her. This is what he was born to do.</p><p>Chest. Mouth. Chest. Mouth. Chest.</p><p>His body begs him to stop, but his mind is stronger. There’s no amount of cardio that could’ve prepared him for this. (Is that a siren approaching or his ears ringing?) He could’ve run a marathon every day and still be winded beyond the point that he’d thought it was possible to be winded. But nothing is impossible for him. When it comes to her.</p><p>The next time there’s a hand on his shoulder, it’s not asking. It grips him tight and he tries to shake it off but it won’t be shaken off, and there’s a voice too, and when he looks up he sees the blur of a blue EMT uniform. They take advantage of his hesitation to surround her, and he sits back on his heels. He can’t feel his knees. Does he still have knees? He looks down to make sure. He staggers hard as he tries to his feet, and falls. He tries again. This is important, because now they’re putting her on a stretcher and getting ready to take her away and he <em>needs</em> to go with her, he <em>needs</em> to, why can’t they understand? Why is someone holding him back from trying to climb into the ambulance with legs he can’t feel? How is he sitting down on the grass? When did that happen? And how is the ambulance leaving already, racing across the field?</p><p>Someone tips a water bottle into his mouth. He swallows automatically so he doesn’t choke. But soon it’s too much, and he chokes and sputters. The bottle relents, and he props his knees up and hangs his head between them, trying to breathe. Reality comes back bit by bit. He feels the grass under his hands. His body tells him all the ways it hurts, even the ones he hadn’t noticed before.</p><p>“Ben?” Poe is saying. “How are you doing? Have some more water. Kaydel, didn’t someone have juice? Can you find it?”</p><p>Ben raises his head but resists the water bottle Poe brings to his mouth, instead taking it in his own hand. He drinks and drinks, and when the water is gone his hand has crushed the plastic, and Poe hands him a bottle of juice. He drinks that too, with greedy gulps, and by the time he’s done he can say in response to Poe’s inquiries, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”</p><p>“You don’t look so good, maybe just sit there for a while. Do you want to lie down? Hey! Somebody pour some water on a napkin!”</p><p>Ben waves him off. “I’m fine.”</p><p>“Why didn’t you let me take over? You didn’t need to do it all alone.”</p><p>
  <em>Yes, I did.</em>
</p><p>Poe hands him a wet napkin, and he uses it to wipe his forehead and then his cheeks, but when he raises the fingertips of his other hand to his eye it’s still wet. Is he crying? And why is his hand shaking? He’s still sweating, but now it’s cold.</p><p>“Hey, Ben?” Poe says. “I think you’re going into shock. We’re going to get you some help, okay?”</p><p>There’s a new flurry that he’s only vaguely aware of. Someone drapes a picnic blanket around him. He shivers.</p><p>This time, when the ambulance comes, he’s the one they put on a stretcher. And as the doors slam shut at his feet, he’s grateful.</p><p>Because this is the fastest way, after all, to get to her.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The pain of the bee sting only barely registers. The sharp pinch almost immediately fades away, crowded out by adrenaline. Because now a clock has started, and if she doesn’t get to her EpiPen in time...well, she needs to get to her EpiPen in time. <em>Three minutes.</em></p><p>She doesn’t even need to look up to sense Ben by her side. He joins her in the search, and they’re on hands and knees beside each other, in the grass, and it’s not here, and how is it not <em>here? </em>She’s frantic.</p><p>The clock ticks away, and she feels it: the second her throat starts to close. If it’s not here, then it’s too late, and all she can do is hold onto him as her legs crumple beneath her. The darkness starts around the edge of her vision, then clouds the middle. His face is the last thing she sees. If this is the end, at least she’s going to die in his arms. There are worse ways to go.</p><p>As the darkness takes over, her brain throws faces at her. Just snapshots in time, of people she knew. Her classmate from high school. The barista she used to work with. Her college roommate. The guy she met at the laundromat. And Ben. Ben. Ben again.</p><p>Why? Why them? Why Ben?</p><p>Before she can find an answer, the darkness pulls her under.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>It’s still black. She’s trapped in some dark place of safety. She can’t get out, but at least they can’t get in: the shouts and the hurry and the noise and the beeping.</p><p>Is this what it feels like, to die?</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Her brain gives her memories, not dreams.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Her first day of work. She’s nervous, in the way that she’s always nervous for new things: the way that involves burying it under layers of bravado. She’s going to be the most friendly, cheerful, outgoing, competent worker this office has ever had, goddammit.</p><p>When she meets him, she doesn’t immediately get a read on him beyond <em>big. Tall.</em> But when she smiles and introduces herself and holds out her hand for him to shake, he takes it with surprising gentleness and smiles back. Not a full smile: no one else would’ve seen it for what it is, probably. But there’s a shy, tentative twitch of his lips. And his eyes soften when he looks at her. She likes it.</p><p>She likes it a<em> lot.</em></p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Occasionally he wears a shirt that seems a little smaller than the rest, or maybe some days he’s just bigger. Because once in a while his buttons strain particularly with the effort of holding him in, and it doesn’t seem to do things to anyone else the way it does to her.</p><p>One Thursday a straining buttons day coincides with a staff meeting day, and she has trouble looking at him, but even more trouble looking away. It seems cruel to leave all that tension when it could so easily be relieved. If he just took off his shirt. Or better yet, if he let her. In his office, with his back against the door. Button by button. They would pop open <em>so</em> easily. His shirt would thank her.</p><p>She could run her fingertips down the center of his chest, right down the strip of skin bared to her as the fabric sprung apart. She wonders if she would find a trail of hair there, that would lead from his navel down to his waistband, where her fingers could grab the rest of his shirt to untuck it. She could step forward, then, and press a kiss to the hollow just above his collarbone. It would be then, in her daydream, that he wouldn’t be able to help himself any longer, that he would grab her waist and spin her around and press <em>her</em> against the door, and kiss her until she couldn’t think.</p><p>Someone says her name in the meeting and she looks up, blushing. When she musters nerve enough to look at him again a few minutes later, he looks away quickly, like he was watching.</p><p>She smiles into her hand.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The first time he shows up at the bar, she’s surprised. Rose had said he never came to these happy hours. He pauses just inside the door, like he’s considering turning around and going right back out. She can’t have <em>that.</em> So she calls out, “Ben!” And when he looks over she can see how nervous he is, but hopeful, too—so much so that the hope outweighs the nerves.</p><p>She doesn’t wait for him to come to her; she goes to him. She wants to hold onto him so he doesn’t change his mind after all and leave. She doesn’t hold on, but she can’t keep her hand from at least touching him, just for a second. He looks down at the spot on his wrist where their skin met. And when he looks back up his eyes are wide. And then she smiles, and then he does, and it all gets to be too much so she barrels headlong into talking about work. It’s nothing, really.</p><p>But it feels like a something.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>It comes to her unprompted, the realization: what the faces were. The snapshots. Those random faces, not random after all. Because now she knows what makes them different.</p><p>Love.</p><p>Love for <em>her.</em></p><p>If she had lungs she would gasp.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>There’s something new about the darkness. It’s not so black anymore. A little light filters in.</p><p>She’s aware, for the first time, of her body. She still has a body. So she can’t be dead, right?</p><p>There’s a voice coming from outside of her. A man’s voice. It’s quiet and steady, even and unbreaking. Reading, rather than speaking.</p><p>
  <em>“...But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you is that you will believe this of me.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I will, Mr. Carton.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and between whom and you there is an impassable space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice...”</em>
</p><p>In that <em>voice.</em> Ben’s voice? Is she dreaming? It feels too solid to be a dream, with none of the familiar haze around the edges. <em>Ben,</em> she wants to say. <em>Wait for me. I’m coming. You love me!</em></p><p>
  <em>Please, just stay a little longer! I need you. I need to tell you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll be right there.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ben...</em>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She opens her eyes slowly. She’s aware of pain in her chest, dulled by a cottony feeling. She’s somewhere she doesn’t know. A hospital, maybe? She looks to one side and sees a heart monitor. For <em>her</em> heart?</p><p>She searches her memory sluggishly and finds the picnic. The sting. The terror.</p><p>She looks to her other side. Her eyes alight on a dark head of hair, and a man sitting in a chair, asleep. Ben? What is he doing here? She’s confused.</p><p>But more than the fuzzy ache, more than the confusion, she’s overwhelmed by a feeling that there was something vitally important back there in the darkness. Something that she was supposed to remember.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This is the longest I’ve ever gone between chapter updates and I’ve been feeling so guilty about leaving you hanging, I’m sorry! I definitely haven’t abandoned it! I have upped the chapter count though... 😊</p><p>I don’t know when the next chapter will be up—I’m working on something big that’s taking up most of my writing time—but feel free to come visit me on <a href="https://twitter.com/CeliaAnd2">Twitter</a> for updates! 💛</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. For Her</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>In case it hasn’t become abundantly apparent yet, I have absolutely zero medical knowledge and crave your pardon for what I’m sure are gross factual errors regarding hospitals, HIPAA, the practice of medicine, the human body, etc.</p><p>Please be aware that Ben has a mildly graphic CPR-related nightmare in the paragraph that begins “He has nightmares,” and he very despondently imagines worst-case death-related scenarios while waiting for Rey to wake up. Mind the tags. ❤️</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>He’s diagnosed with heat stroke and put in a cold bath. They think he’s confused, because he keeps asking for Rey.</p><p>Finally he stops asking and submits to an IV for dehydration. The sooner they’re convinced that confusion isn’t a symptom, the sooner he can find her. He bites his tongue and forces a smile when the ER doctor comes by to check on him. The doctor nods with satisfaction at Ben’s chart and gives him a good-natured ribbing for the irony of landing himself in the hospital from performing CPR. Ben musters a chuckle. The doctor is satisfied.</p><p>Time passes differently in the ER. He doesn’t know how long it’s been when he’s finally discharged with the instruction not to drive himself home. They offer a cab service. He declines. He technically obeys the discharge instructions: he doesn’t drive himself home; he goes to the main intake desk instead.</p><p>“Excuse me,” he asks the nurse, hiding the wristband that marks him as a patient, “I’m here to see Rey Johnson.”</p><p>“Visiting hours ended two hours ago.”</p><p>“Can you tell me how she is? Is she—” He can’t say it. He can’t say <em>alive,</em> because to say it would be to admit that there’s any other possibility, and it’s unthinkable—it’s outside the realm of possibility that Rey is dead and the world kept on turning on its axis.</p><p>“Sir,” the nurse says, sympathetically but firmly, “unless a patient has authorized us to release information about their condition to you, I can’t tell you their status. Are you family?”</p><p>“No, I’m...no.”</p><p>“Then I’m sorry. I can’t disclose.” She clearly thinks it’s the end of the conversation.</p><p>He just stands there. Waiting for her to understand. She <em>needs</em> to understand.</p><p>“Was there something else I can help with?”</p><p>“No. Yes. Please— can I just see her, for one minute?”</p><p>“Sir, I can’t let you do that.” Her tone drifts from sympathy toward do-I-need-to-call-security.</p><p>His salvation comes once again in the form of a blue uniform. “Hey!” He turns to see an EMT—whether hers or his, he doesn’t remember, but it doesn’t matter, as long as he’ll vouch for him. “Nice CPR! You a medic?”</p><p>Ben shakes his head.</p><p>The EMT jabs his thumb at Ben and tells the nurse, “This guy did CPR for 27 minutes straight, outdoors in this heat. Saved her life.” He claps Ben on the back and keeps on walking.</p><p><em>Alive. She’s alive.</em> The nurse rolls her eyes, probably at the HIPAA infraction, but turns back to Ben more kindly. “Go home, sir. Visiting hours start at nine tomorrow.”</p><p>Ben nods dumbly and turns away. He doesn’t leave; he ducks into the corner marked Family Waiting Area. The nurse sees but doesn’t object. He folds himself into a chair and curls up as best he can. He closes his eyes and tries to let the background bustle lull him to sleep.</p><p>It works, eventually.</p><p>
  <em>She’s alive.</em>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>He wakes slowly and is immediately aware of a crick in his neck. He lifts a hand to support his head as he raises it from where it rests on the wall behind him, stifling a grunt of pain.</p><p>He takes a minute to orient himself. His legs are sprawled sideways, and he shifts his hips to sit up in the chair. It seems to be morning, judging by the amount of activity around him. He extricates his phone from his pocket to check the time. It’s dead. He looks around and finally finds a clock on the wall behind him. His back protests as he twists. It’s 8:51. Perfect timing.</p><p>He goes to the bathroom and washes his face. He tries to do something about his wrinkled shirt and mussed hair but finally gives up.</p><p>He approaches the desk at 8:59. A different nurse sits busily typing. She glances up as he approaches and gives him a <em>one second</em> index finger. He tugs on his wristband, hoping to rip it off. It doesn’t budge.</p><p>“How can I help you?” she asks.</p><p>“I’m here to visit someone,” he gulps. “Rey Johnson.”</p><p>“Sign in there,” she says, gesturing to a clipboard and turning back to the computer. “Johnson. Room 234.” He writes his name with a shaky hand, and she looks down at it to type it in. “Solo? Benjamin Solo?”</p><p>He nods.</p><p>She consults the screen. “You might want to answer your phone. We’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday afternoon.”</p><p>“To reach me?” he repeats dumbly.</p><p>“As the emergency contact.”</p><p>What is she talking about? “Whose emergency contact?”</p><p>She looks at him strangely. “Rey Johnson’s.”</p><p>It must be a mistake. But if it gets him in to see her, he won’t correct her. “Of course. Sorry. My phone died. How is she doing?”</p><p>“She’s stable. Go down this hall, make a right, then another right and it’s on the left. Room 234. I’ll send the doctor in to give you an update.”</p><p>“Thank you.” His feet follow her instructions.</p><p>Room 234. He pauses at the door, hesitating. He doesn’t deserve to be here. What if her real emergency contact comes? Her family, or her friends? He won’t stay long.</p><p>He presses the door open and slips inside furtively, like he’s doing something wrong. He’s not prepared. For any of it. For how small she looks, lying asleep in the hospital bed. <em>Asleep, right? Not...in a coma?</em> Or for the beeping monitor that attests to her heart rhythm and her breathing. It’s wrong, all of it. She shouldn’t be here. This bed should be occupied by someone old or infirm, not <em>Rey.</em> Not the embodiment of youth and energy and beauty.</p><p>He stands at the foot of the bed, not venturing closer. Her head rests turned to one side, and he can see a faint heartbeat in her neck. It’s comforting. It feels <em>real, </em>more than the beeping machines do. She’s alive. <em>She’s alive.</em></p><p>His knees buckle and start to give way. He makes it to the chair by the bed before he collapses entirely. The onset of sobs takes him by surprise, and he claps a hand over his mouth to stifle them. She could’ve <em>died.</em> At this exact moment in time she could be actually not breathing. The world could be learning to make do without her, but his world would’ve been over. And no one would’ve known.</p><p><em>She</em> wouldn’t have known.</p><p>“Rey,” he gasps between sobs, because it’s imperative that he say it once, even if it’s just to his palm. “I love you.”</p><p>The words exist outside of his body now. There isn’t so much as a momentary blip in the steady cadence of the heart monitor. He’s not surprised; he didn’t expect anything different.</p><p>After all, it wasn’t the Beast who brought Beauty back.</p><p>There’s a perfunctory knock at the door before the doctor comes in. Ben scrambles to his feet, wiping his eyes with both hands. He doesn’t remember all of what the doctor said afterwards, but he gets the gist.</p><p>There’s no lasting damage as far as they can tell. But the human body wasn’t built to go without oxygen. She went through trauma, and she’ll be unconscious until her body heals itself. She has at least a couple broken ribs. They won’t know if there’s neurological damage until she regains consciousness.</p><p>“Can she hear what we’re saying right now?”</p><p>“We don’t know. Sometimes brain waves suggest a listening response. Feel free to talk to her as if she can hear.”</p><p>“Is she in pain?”</p><p>The doctor looks down at the chart. “No, she’s on a moderate dose of painkillers.”</p><p>“When will she wake up?”</p><p>The doctor looks up at him. “When she’s ready.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>He sits. He waits. He watches her. He reads to her. He learns where the vending machines are. He doesn’t leave.</p><p>When the nurse comes to tell him visiting hours are over, that first evening, he doesn’t have the energy to ask her for an exception, because it takes all his energy to watch Rey hurting. He just looks at the nurse and says the only thing he can think of: “Please.”</p><p>Maybe it shows a little, in his eyes. The desperation. She lets him stay.</p><p>He sleeps in the chair. His neck always hurts now. He hopes her bed is comfortable. He hopes it doesn’t hurt her to breathe.</p><p>He has nightmares. He’s doing chest compressions, so softly that he knows they’re not doing anything, and the instructor is telling him to push <em>harder</em> but her bones keep breaking under his hands, and even when he stops, her rib cage crumbles and she’s dead and he broke her.</p><p>That’s why he can’t leave, because if he woke up from the nightmare in his own bed and she wasn’t there he thinks it might kill him.</p><p>A couple days in, Poe texts him to say that a few people from the office are going to visit Rey at 2:00. Ben uses the opportunity to take a shower down the hall, in the bathroom that one of the nurses had shown him. As he’s lathering up his hair, it occurs to him to wonder why Poe texted him. It’s not like he was asking if Ben wanted to join them.</p><p>He hasn’t figured it out when he finishes showering and puts his dirty clothes back on with a sense of regret that he’s subjecting Rey to his smelly self. He debates going home to pick up some clothes.</p><p>When he goes back to Rey’s room, after checking carefully that the coast is clear, he finds a stack of clothes on the chair. All new, with the tags still on, and all in his size. He’s even more confused.</p><p>He goes to the nurses’ station and bashfully asks if they left the clothes for him, but they say they didn’t. He files it away with other mysteries in the his brain, like what kind of clerical error led to the hospital accidentally having him listed as Rey’s emergency contact.</p><p>He buys a stack of books from the hospital gift shop and reads to her. He hopes that if she can hear, he’s not annoying her. He doesn’t read any of the books all the way through, so as not to subject her to them for too long if she doesn’t like them. He blesses whoever chose to stock a few classics, tucked in the corner next to the wall of romance and mystery. He reads her Cervantes, Rostand, Dickens.</p><p>
  <em>There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it.</em>
</p><p>He summarizes for her the parts he doesn’t read, in case she can hear, so she won’t be confused.</p><p>
  <em>Farewell, Roxane, because today I die.</em>
</p><p>And if the chapters he chooses tend to be about hopelessly unrequited love, that’s no one’s business but his own.</p><p>
  <em>Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.</em>
</p><p>He texts Poe once in a while to say that he’s still out on leave. He doesn’t know exactly how much he had saved up, but a couple weeks in he thinks he’s probably close to running out. He steps out into the hallway and calls Poe, for the first time. He picks up on the first ring.</p><p>“Ben! Hi!”</p><p>“Hi.”</p><p>“How’re you doing?”</p><p>“Fine.”</p><p>“All recovered? We’re worried about you.”</p><p>“I’m fine.”</p><p>“And Rey?”</p><p>“She’s okay.” <em>Shit. So much for secrecy.</em> He hurries on. “I wanted to see if it’s okay if I take leave without pay, once my leave runs out.”</p><p>Poe’s answer is prompt. “Nope.”</p><p>“Oh.” He doesn’t want to lose his job, but if the alternative is having to leave her...</p><p>“You don’t need to,” Poe is saying. “Everyone chipped in a day or two of their leave, to cover you.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“We got you, Ben. As long as you need.”</p><p>“I—” Why do his eyes feel watery all of a sudden? “You don’t have to.”</p><p>“I know. We want to.”</p><p>Ben clears his traitorously choked throat. “Thanks.”</p><p>“You got it. And Ben?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“I know I don’t need to tell you this, but...take care of her, okay?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>He goes back into the room. He sits down. He watches her. He thinks he might know where the clothes came from.</p><p>He wonders if this is what it feels like, to be cared about. Maybe when she wakes up he can ask her.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>It’s hardest at night. Because when the lights are low, her cheekbones carve shadows from her face and what if the doctors are wrong? What if her waking up is an <em>if,</em> not a <em>when?</em> Because it’s been weeks and he knows she’s been through trauma, he knows he broke her, he knows her body needs to rest, but <em>he</em> needs her. Even if nothing changes. Even if she wakes up and he slips out and they go back to work and never speak of it, he needs to share a world with her. He <em>needs</em> to.</p><p>Often he reads at night, too, to quiet those thoughts that insist that one night her tired heart will give one last flutter and he’ll be alone. Worse than alone. Because he’ll have for company all the love he didn’t say.</p><p>He tries not to talk, tries not to tell her, in case she can hear. Most of the time it works. Until one night, when the voices are too loud to drown out.</p><p>He reaches out for the first time. Takes her hand.</p><p>
  <em>When will she wake up?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When she’s ready.</em>
</p><p>“Can you do one thing for me, Rey? Do you think you can be ready soon? I don’t want to rush you, you can take all the time you need, but can you maybe come back? Okay?”</p><p>He grasps her warm, dry hand with both of his and buries his face in the blanket. He doesn’t stay like that too long, because what if she wakes up and finds him there? He wrenches himself away and settles back in the chair.</p><p>She’s not ready yet. She needs him to wait. So it’s not even a question.</p><p>He’ll wait.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>My darlings! Thank you for sticking with me and this haphazardly updated morsel of a fic! 💛 I don’t yet know if this will be four chapters or five or some entirely different number because I’m a <em>huge</em> mess right now, writing wise. 😊 I’m only sporadically responding to comments here, but please know that I absolutely treasure them, and if you’d like a reply feel free to reach out on <a href="https://twitter.com/celiaand2">Twitter</a> or <a href="https://curiouscat.me/Celia_And">CuriousCat</a>!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Five Weeks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>He’s asleep, sitting up but slouched over, with a book in his lap and his hand for a bookmark. She casts her mind back.</p><p>The picnic. She remembers that clearly. And the sting and the frantic, fruitless search for her EpiPen. She remembers him helping her look, him catching her as she fell, him holding her. And what came next? There couldn’t have been something after, so why does a nagging voice in the back of her head insist that there was?</p><p>She moves her legs experimentally, then her arms. There’s no discomfort in her limbs, but when she shifts her torso, a dull pain forces out a weak moan.</p><p>His head rises. The book slides from his lap to the floor.</p><p>“Rey?”</p><p>He’s there, beside her, and his hands hover beside her cheeks like he would take her face in his hands except that something is stopping him.</p><p>“Rey?” he asks again, in a whisper.</p><p>She tries to say <em>Ben</em> but it comes out as an unintelligible, breathy croak.</p><p>“Oh, God.” He presses the back of one hand to his lips as a tear races down his cheek. “Rey.” His hand moves toward hers like he’ll take it, but he restrains himself again. “Are you okay? Can you understand me? Can you talk? Wait! No, don’t talk.” He races to the door, tears it open, and sticks his head out. “Doctor! Nurse!” He bounds back to her side. “You’re awake. Oh, God. Oh, Rey.”</p><p>She lies there and follows him with her eyes. She tries to smile, to reassure him, and she’s pleased to find that her muscles do what her brain tells them to do.</p><p>He gasps through tears.</p><p>A nurse rushes in, and Ben steps back from the bed hurriedly to give her room. Then someone else comes in, then another person, and they’re shining lights in her eyes and looking at machines and asking her to blink if she can hear them. She doesn’t blink, she talks instead. They can’t understand her the first few times. They lean close and tell her to blink twice if she’s in pain. <em>Ben,</em> she tries to say. It’s more like a moan than a croak this time. Better.</p><p>“Ben.”</p><p>They all turn around to look at him. But he’s gone.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>They tell her she has four fractured ribs from CPR administration. She recovers quickly by the doctors’ standards, but not quickly enough for her taste. She wants to go home. She wants to sleep in her bed and eat food that’s not hospital food. She passes their neurology tests. She can speak entirely intelligibly, remember things, and feed herself. She can walk but she can’t shower because lifting her hands to her head hurts her ribs. She’s working on it.</p><p>Everyone from the office comes to visit, bearing cards and stuffed animals and more flowers than the surfaces in her hospital room can hold. Rose brings her her favorite sweater and smuggles in a bag of gummy worms in the sleeve. Rey gnaws on them and watches Finn reenact Poe’s horror at finding a mouse in her vacant cubicle, and she laughs until her ribs are sore and visiting hours are over and the nurse comes to kick them out.</p><p>Everyone comes to visit, that is, except Ben.</p><p>She feels weird asking about him. It seems like no one knew he’d been at the hospital with her, or in any case if they didn’t mention it. He wasn’t featured in any of their stories of what had happened at work while she was unconscious, which shouldn’t be a surprise. He’s unobtrusive. But it almost felt like they were deliberately not mentioning him, she thinks. She can’t articulate why, or explain it. It’s frustrating.</p><p>He doesn’t come to visit. She has no proof he was even there except for the book on the floor. <em>A Tale of Two Cities.</em> She’s never read it. She wonders how far he got. She wonders if he read it aloud to her. She hopes he did.</p><p>Finally the doctors say she can go home, as long as she gets someone to take her to outpatient physical therapy three times a week. It’ll be five weeks before her ribs fully heal, they estimate. For the first two weeks she watches Netflix and learns how to knit badly and makes a misshapen scarf and then decides she’s going to go crazy if she stays at home any longer. She shows up at work one day and resists Poe’s strenuous efforts to send her back home. She gets a couple hours’ work done before her ribs start aching and she leaves. If Ben is in his office she can’t tell, because the door is closed. She wants to knock but she wouldn’t know what to say if he answered.</p><p>The next day she manages three hours. Ben is indeed in his office, she realizes, when he comes out to go to the bathroom. He does a double-take when he sees her. She smiles, but he just nods briefly, goes down the hall to the bathroom, and comes back and shuts the door without a second glance. He was always somewhat anti-social, but these are new heights. No one comments on it, at least around her. She thinks she sees Rose exchange a significant glance with Finn once when Ben comes out to retrieve something from the printer. He takes the long way around so he doesn’t have to walk by her desk. She wonders if she did or said something horrible to him: if that’s the thing lurking just out of reach that she can’t remember.</p><p>A week later, she’s back to working full time. Within another week her ribs are nearly healed. She occasionally stops and winces at a little burst of discomfort, but she’s pretty sure she hides it well enough that no one notices. Poe insists on ordering her a special ergonomic chair, and Rose and Finn leap to help her when she gets up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom. She shoos them away but her heart fills up with the fact that there are people in her life who like helping her.</p><p>Ben still stays shut up in his office. She starts to think that the night she woke up was a dream after all.</p><p>Rose and Finn set up an office happy hour to celebrate her official five weeks healing date. Ben doesn’t come. Four drinks in, she’s tired of tiptoeing around the subject.</p><p>“Hey!” she slaps the table with her fist. “Where’s Ben?”</p><p>Rose heaves a dramatic sigh. “Oh, Ben.” Finn snickers into his glass.</p><p>“Ben what?” Rey asks, leaning toward Rose.</p><p>“Silly, silly boy.” She takes a drink, and Rey waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t.</p><p>“What’m I missing?” Rey demands.</p><p>“Did you ever wonder...” Finn slurs. Rose kicks him under the table, judging by the ensuing “Ow!”</p><p>“They have to figure it out themselves!” she hisses.</p><p>“Figure <em>what</em> out?” Rey pleads.</p><p>Rose smiles sympathetically. “Talk to him.”</p><p>“He doesn’t want to talk to me. He <em>avoids</em> me,” Rey complains.</p><p>“Why do you care?” Rose asks.</p><p>Rey is lost for words. “I... I just... I dunno.”</p><p>“Maybe that’s something you could think about. Or maybe you could <em>talk to him.”</em></p><p>“You’re a bad friend,” Rey pouts.</p><p>“I’m a <em>wonderful</em> friend,” Rose corrects, jabbing her finger in Rey’s direction. “You just haven’t realized it yet.”</p><p>“Tell me.”</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>“Roooooose,” she whines.</p><p>Rose smirks and does finger guns.</p><p>“Not finger guns!” Rey moans.</p><p>“You love my finger guns. And you love me. And you’re gonna love me even more when you and Ben finally figure your shit out.”</p><p>“We don’t have shit.”</p><p>“You have <em>so</em> much shit. Not, like, shit. Not in a bad way. You have... things.”</p><p>“We’re not even a <em>we.”</em></p><p>Rose smiles knowingly. There’s no earthly reason for Rey to blush, so the heat on her face must be from the drinks.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She’s mad at him, she decides. If he has a problem with her, he should just come out and say it to her face. There’s no reason for him to hole up in his office and ignore everyone. Not when he’d been doing so well before: coming to happy hours and talking to her and smiling at her and looking at her like she was... someone. Someone worth looking at. He doesn’t look at her anymore. His shirts don’t strain at the buttons. She wonders if he’s lost weight, and she worries, and then she has to remind herself that she’s mad at him.</p><p>The shine goes off everything, a little. A shine she hadn’t even realized was there: one that started around the time he first smiled at her. She’d told herself it was the job and the having friends. But it was him, too—more than she let herself admit. She realizes at some point that the hospital probably called him because she’d put him down as her emergency contact; that’s why he was there. Maybe he felt obligated to stay because she didn’t have anyone else. She shouldn’t have done it, of course. She’d gone for a physical for the first time in years, because she had a job and health insurance and this was a thing that people did, and she was crushing the whole adulting thing. They gave her the form and she should’ve put Rose or Finn, but that was the week that he’d picked up her EpiPen and she wrote his name and number down before she could think better of it. She didn’t let herself think why at the time. Now she knows.</p><p>He makes her feel safe. It was why he was the first person she looked to when the bee stung her. She’s never doubted that if she needed him, he would be there. And he was.</p><p>Maybe she still needs him, though. And he’s not there anymore. And it’s anger, of course, that she’s feeling. Not hurt.</p><p>Nothing like heartbreak.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>He still comes to staff meetings. She supposes it’s because he can’t get out of it. He tends to sit as far from her as possible, usually on the same side of the table, so she can’t easily see him without leaning forward or back. One day he’s already sat down when she gets to the conference room, and he sees her but quickly looks away. She flushes angrily and plops down in the empty chair next to him as punishment. He doesn’t look at her the entire hour—not one time. When the meeting is over he quickly stands to leave. She looks up at him where he looms over her. In the background, Rose yelps with hilarity at something someone said. A memory is knocked loose.</p><p>Pain. Panic. Screams. No air. Ben.</p><p>Flashes. Faces. Love.</p><p>And <em>Ben.</em></p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>You didn’t think I’d forgotten about these sweet babies, did you? 😊</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Six Faces</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My biggest hugs and thanks again to <a href="https://twitter.com/reylographer">@reylographer</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Rey_Organa_Solo">@Rey_Organa_Solo</a> for these gorgeous moodboards!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
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</p><p> </p><p>He’s tempted to ignore the doorbell. He’s already settled in for an evening of Netflix. (Or, more accurately, an evening of having Netflix on so he can pretend he’s doing something other than sitting on the couch and staring off into the middle distance.) It’s probably a cable salesperson, or someone with a petition.</p><p>He sinks further down into the couch. He always tries to put off going to sleep as long as possible. The nightmares have gotten worse. She comes to him hurting and broken. Sometimes blaming him, sometimes confused, with wide-eyed questions. <em>Why did you do this to me, Ben? Why did you hurt me? I don’t understand.</em> Her ribs fall out.</p><p>The doorbell rings again, more insistently this time. He wraps his arms protectively around himself. They’ll go away.</p><p>They don’t.</p><p>Next comes a thumping on the door. He gets to his feet reluctantly, to tell them to leave him alone. His socks sweep the strip of floor from the couch to the door. He pulls it open apathetically.</p><p>
  <em>Rey.</em>
</p><p>Her cheeks are red, and her eyes are shining. She seems to be vibrating with some barely-concealed thrill. He stares.</p><p>“It took you long enough. I was about to kick down the door.”</p><p>“Rey.”</p><p>“Can I come in, or what?”</p><p>He steps back automatically, holding the door open for her. She’s still wearing the blouse and flowing, wide-legged trousers that she had on for work. He’s already changed into sweatpants and a tee-shirt. He would feel woefully underdressed except that his brain can’t spare any cells to redirect from utter disbelief.</p><p>“You’ve been avoiding me,” she accuses.</p><p>He doesn’t answer. He’s too busy staring.</p><p>“This whole time, ever since I woke up, I’ve had this feeling that there’s something Rose and Finn and everyone weren’t telling me. And you were avoiding me. And I felt like I had these puzzle pieces but all the ways I tried to put them together, they wouldn’t fit. I don’t like not being able to figure things out. But this was more than just some intellectual exercise, it was important. Because you don’t smile at me anymore, Ben.”</p><p>He stands caught in her spell.</p><p>“You came to visit me in the hospital. Why?” she demands.</p><p>He shakes his head to try to clear it. “They said I was your emergency contact.”</p><p>She flushes. “Oh.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, I should have told them it was some sort of clerical error, but I wanted... I don’t know.”</p><p>Her eyebrows pinch quizzically. “What are you talking about?”</p><p>“I mean, obviously you wouldn’t put me down as your emergency contact person, the records must have gotten mixed up somehow.”</p><p>She stares up at him steadily. “So you thought it was a mistake, but you still came to visit often enough that you happened to be there when I woke up?”</p><p>He gulps. “Yeah. I came to visit. Sometimes.”</p><p>“Sometimes,” she echoes. “Like in the middle of the night.”</p><p>“I’m so sorry, Rey, I didn’t mean to take advantage of some mistake. I know you wouldn’t have wanted me there if you were awake, but I just wanted to... <em>Shit,</em> I sound like a stalker or something. I never wanted to make you uncomfortable. I can quit this job if you want, or—”</p><p>She cuts him off. “I did put you down as my emergency contact.”</p><p>His brain skids to a halt. “What?”</p><p>She smiles. “I did put you down as my emergency contact.”</p><p>“But... why?”</p><p>“Did you sleep there every night? At the hospital?”</p><p>His face burns. “Well, yeah.”</p><p>She takes a deep breath. “I thought I was just bad at putting the puzzle pieces together, but I wasn’t. I was missing the big piece in the middle, the one all the other ones connect to. And I just found it today, I think.” She wrings her hands. “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re going to think I’m crazy. Because it’s probably impossible.”</p><p>“I could never think you’re crazy, Rey.”</p><p>She bites her lip and smiles: a small, hopeful thing. “After I was stung, just before I lost consciousness, I saw these faces. Of people I’ve known. They weren’t just blurry memories, they felt real enough that I could’ve touched them if my arms were working.” She’s looking down at his chest, not his face, like the only way she can say it is if she doesn’t look at him. He’d like to tell her that she can say anything to any part of his body she wants.</p><p>“It was a weird assortment of people. It wasn’t like a ‘life flashes before your eyes’ thing; it wasn’t the people who figured the most prominently. Some of them I barely knew. There was my classmate from high school, who I haven’t talked to in a decade, and one of my old coworkers. Two, actually. Another one was my college roommate, Allie, who I feel out of touch with a year or two after we lived together. And also this random guy that I used to chat with at the laundromat sometimes. But at the time, when everything was going dark, for some reason I knew exactly why I was seeing these particular people. I had this overwhelming certainty that these were the people in my life who had been in love with me at some point. And it wasn’t coming from my own brain. If someone had asked me who might’ve loved me, I don’t know that I would have guessed any of those five people. It was like some external power was giving me this knowledge. Like the universe or something showed me. Five faces.” She looks up at his face. “Do you think that’s possible?”</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>“You don’t believe me,” she accuses.</p><p>“It’s not that I don’t believe you, I just... I don’t know. Maybe those people were in love with you. Probably.”</p><p>“But you don’t think that was the universe showing me all the people who had loved me?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>She smiles softly. “What if I told you it wasn’t just those five faces? What if there was a sixth, so vivid and clear that it crowded all the other ones out? Like that was the person who loved me best in the whole world? Enough to sleep in a hospital room chair for weeks and read me books for hours even though he didn’t know if I could hear?”</p><p>His hands are trembling.</p><p>There’s a whole sunrise in her smile. “It was you, Ben. The sixth face.” She lets out a shaking breath. “Do you think it’s possible?”</p><p>He swallows and nods, and he can’t speak because the lump in his throat is too big for words to squeeze past. She steps toward him and takes his face gently in both of her hands.</p><p>“That’s why I put you down as my emergency contact person. Because I’m pretty sure I love you too.”</p><p>He should have said it back. He should have scrounged for the words that could even begin to show her a corner of his love. But it’s too late for that, because she’s pulled his head down to meet hers and his hands are on her waist and her bottom lip is between the two of his and this <em>must</em> be a dream, but it’s not, because she’s real and his chest is warm where she’s pressing herself against it, or maybe it’s just warm because of all the love that’s inside. Her hands and mouth lay their possessive claim, and if he could talk he would tell her that there’s no need—that all of him is all for her. But if she wants to tug his hair and suck his lip to prove it, that’s not a problem. She can do that. She can do anything to him.</p><p>It isn’t until after his arms are locked around her back that he remembers, and cries out and springs back like she burned him.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” She looks bereft.</p><p>“We can’t. I can’t. Your ribs. I’ll hurt you.”</p><p>She doesn’t answer him in words. She tugs the end of her blouse free of her trousers and slowly lifts it up, moves it higher and higher until he can see her stomach and her bra and her sternum and oh God, she’s pulling it off and tossing it aside. And she’s reaching behind herself to unhook her bra, and she slips the straps off and it joins her blouse on the floor and she stands bared for his eyes.</p><p>“I’m all better, Ben, see?”</p><p>His eyes skitter frantically, looking for some scar or bruise or blemish that will prove that it’s not just all in his head, that he hurt her. But he doesn’t find any. All he finds is her: her smooth skin and her dark nipples and the firm curves of her abs and the faint lines of her ribs.</p><p>“But...” He draws a shuddering breath. “I broke you.”</p><p>She shakes her head vehemently. “You <em>saved</em> me. I would be dead if it wasn’t for you.”</p><p>The tears burst out in a series of heaving sobs. “What if I...hadn’t been there or...what if I...hadn’t taken CPR or...”</p><p>The harder he tries to stifle the sobs, the more violently they erupt. He covers his face with his hands, and he can’t see her, he can only feel her rubbing both of his arms and telling him, “But you <em>were</em> there, Ben, and you saved me, and look, I’m as good as new, look, Ben, I’m fine. It’s going to be okay, everything’s going to be okay, Ben.”</p><p>Somehow she burrows into his arms, so when he cries it’s into her hair, not his hands, and when he sobs her arms are there to feel it. He clings to her bare skin.</p><p>When his sobs quiet and his tears slow, she rises up on tiptoes and cradles his cheek against hers and turns her head to kiss it. “My sweet boy,” she murmurs. “My sweet, sweet Ben.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.” He has to say it, even if she won’t listen.</p><p>“Mmm, you should be,” she smiles against his cheek, stroking the hair at the back of his neck. “For avoiding me for so long.” She wraps her arms securely around his upper back. “For not smiling at me.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he repeats, pressing her even closer to him.</p><p>She pulls her head back and rests her hands on his shoulders so she can look him in the eyes. Her smile is gone, replaced by an earnest solemnity. “You have <em>nothing</em> to be sorry for, Ben.”</p><p>It’s the first time in months that he’s believed it, so persuasive are her hands on his shoulders and her gaze on his eyes.</p><p>She touches his cheek. “Why didn’t you tell me?”</p><p>“That I love you?” She smiles tremulously even as tears well in her eyes, and he realizes that the first time he tells her shouldn’t be a question. “Oh. Rey. I love you. I’m in love with you.”</p><p>She shakes her head as she smiles, as if to whisk the tears away. “You didn’t tell me.”</p><p>“I never thought you could like me back, in that way.”</p><p>She laughs a wet, incredulous laugh. “You were wrong.”</p><p>His hands travel up and down her back. Her bones are sound and whole. “I’m glad. So glad, Rey.” Oh, for the eloquence of a Cervantes, a Rostand, a Dickens.</p><p>She must hear the words he doesn’t know how to say, though, because she smiles and kisses him and takes a fistful of his tee-shirt as she asks, “Do you want to sleep with me?”</p><p>There’s a new blur to the edges of his vision as the blood drains from his head. “You mean <em>sleep,</em> or...”</p><p>She smiles. “Sleep with me <em>and</em> sleep with me.”</p><p>“Yeah.” His voice shakes, even on one syllable.</p><p>“Okay. Do you want to go to your room?”</p><p>“Oh, wait. Rey. Shit. I don’t have any condoms.” Why hadn’t he bought out a CVS for this exact, unthinkable eventuality?</p><p>She grins mischievously. “I brought some.” She bends down to reach in her purse and smirks as she tosses him the box.</p><p>He catches it against his abs and looks down at it, and up at her, in her pants and shoes and bare breasts and her smile. “I love you.”</p><p>She laughs merrily. “Are you going to show me where your room is or what?”</p><p>He holds the box of condoms in one hand and her hand in the other, and she wraps her other hand around his arm and lets him lead her to his room, and she kisses his shoulder as they step inside. She lets him kneel down in front of her and unbutton her slacks and kiss the skin below the waistband as he slides them down. She hasn’t taken her shoes off, and she laughs as she tries to toe them off in the heap of pants around her feet. He scoops her up in his arms so she doesn’t trip, and that’s how he carries her to the bed: with one green flat still on while the other dangles from her toes. He sets her down, and his bed is messy and unmade but it doesn’t much matter, because she’s smiling up at him as he slides her shoe off so she lies there in only her heather grey panties with a small decorative button sewn on to the front, and he quickly shucks his shirt and pants so he can have sex with her before she thinks better of it and changes her mind.</p><p>He tears open the condom box and grabs a packet and rips it open with fumbling hands, and he’s quickly rolling it on when she stills his hand with hers. She’s sat up, the better to smile reassuringly and kiss his hand gently and suck his finger in her mouth, and then kiss his knuckle and look up at him with deep dark eyes that suggest eternity.</p><p>“There’s no rush. I’m not going anywhere.”</p><p>When she looks at him, he can believe it, and he can let her pull him down gently to the bed and lie him on his back and bend over him and kiss his jaw and his neck and his chest. She seems to like that part especially, judging by her little contended moans. If she likes kissing his chest, the least he can do is have a lot of chest to give her, so he does.</p><p>“Rey.” He cups the back of her head in one of his hands. She looks up and smiles at him, and he watches in awe as she kneels up so she can slide her underwear down, and she sits to pull them off entirely, and then she’s throwing a leg over his hips and straddling him and bending down to kiss him while she rubs her hot, wet core over the tip of his cock where it’s trapped between his stomach and hers. “I love you,” he says, “Rey. I love you. I love you. I love—”</p><p>The last word is just air, lost in the miracle of her cunt. She plants her hands on his chest and rides him slowly, trembling on the upstrokes and moaning on the down. “Yes,” she says shakily, looking down at him as her parted lips curve around the word. “Ben.”</p><p>He holds her wrists, because they’re the closest thing to her hands, and her hands are occupied with bracing her body as she works down and up, splitting herself anew with each pass of his cock. He pops out when she comes up too far as her leg spasms in pleasure, and she breathes a laugh and presses his shaft to her clit with one hand so she can rub up and down against it, masturbating herself with a piece of him.</p><p>“Oh,” he gasps, looking down at her hand and his cock and her folds as if he’s never seen anything like it. And he hasn’t, because he’s never seen her. Everything is new. And he needs to memorize her like a poem, but if he doesn’t get the whole thing learned this time, maybe she’ll undress for him another time and he can learn her again, and again.</p><p>“Ben,” she moans, working herself against him. His eyes snap up to her face, hazy with desire, and he can’t possibly watch her come and not finish himself, but it’s like she knows it and she slips him back inside right at the point of no return, so she peaks with her fingers on her clit and he barely has time to register the way her muscles clench around him before he’s gone, adrift in an ocean of her. The waves crash strong, forcing his hips up to meet her, and he grips her wrist like a lifeline and she frigs herself desperately and wails her pleasure. His orgasm passes before hers ends, so he gets to watch with clear eyes the last shudders that ripple her stomach and twitch her foot against his thigh, and <em>he</em> did that. Well, it was mostly her, but he helped a little.</p><p>Her muscles sag as she smiles tiredly and walks herself down his chest to lie there, panting and spent, but not quite too spent to reach up and thread her fingers through his hair and murmur, “Oh, Ben.”</p><p>He wraps his arms around her and kisses her head as he carefully rolls her off him so he can throw the condom away, and she lies on her back with her hand curled over her head and smiles as she watches him, and she laughs when he yanks new boxers on and leaps back in bed to get to her and he wraps her in his arms and kisses her over and over.</p><p>She squirms and giggles and kisses him back, and when they finally still she’s lying in the circle of his arms and all things are right with the world.</p><p>“What are we going to tell them at work?” she asks, nuzzling his chest.</p><p>He smiles. “That I had been pining over you since the first second I saw you, and you decided to take pity on me?”</p><p>She chortles reprovingly. “Or how about that you sat at my hospital bedside day and night and you’re the best, most selfless person I know?”</p><p>“Oh, they know. I think.”</p><p>“That you’re the best person I know?”</p><p>“The hospital thing. They donated their leave to cover me when I ran out. And brought me clean clothes.”</p><p>Her lips curve against his chest. “Of course they did.”</p><p>He pulls the sheet up further over her back so she’s not cold. “They like you a lot.”</p><p>She props herself up on his chest so she can look at him. “Have you really not figured it out, Ben? That they like you a lot too?”</p><p>He shakes his head instinctually. “Nobody likes me a lot.”</p><p>“The living contradiction to that theory is lying naked in your bed right now.” She shifts herself up so she can kiss his lips gently.</p><p>He runs his hand wonderingly over her hair. “I would kill every bee in the world for you.”</p><p>She bites her lip and smiles. “Did you learn CPR for me?”</p><p>He blushes as he nods.</p><p><em>“God,</em> if you’re not the sweetest fucking person that I’ve ever met, Benjamin Solo.” She curls up on top of him again. “And you’re mine. My person.”</p><p>“All yours,” he murmurs in agreement.</p><p>“You used to read to me,” she says to his chest, “at the hospital.”</p><p>“Mm hmm.”</p><p>“Read to me now,” she commands.</p><p>He smiles. “I don’t have a book.”</p><p>“Tell me a story, then.”</p><p>“Once upon a time, I love you.”</p><p>She hums sleepily, a smile in her voice. “That’s not a story.”</p><p>He takes her hot, limp hand in his and brings it up to press it to his lips. “I don’t know the ending yet. Just the beginning.”</p><p>“Tell it to me again,” she mumbles.</p><p>He’s not Cervantes, or Rostand, or Dickens. But he can’t imagine wanting to be any of them, or anyone else in the world. Because she’s lying whole and warm and alive in his arms, and there’s nothing else he could possibly ask.</p><p>“Once upon a time,” he says, “I love you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And they all lived happily ever after. 💛</p><p>I’m on <a href="https://twitter.com/CeliaAnd2">Twitter</a>!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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